I made a mistake tonight at work. It wasn’t a big mistake but it still made me trigger when it was pointed out. I took extra long being careful with every word I used in my email reply. And of course I thought about it for a while after and felt shame.
But now I am sitting here and deciding that I am ok with it.
We have a lot of change at work and there are new work dynamics, people dynamics and I am working hard to learn to grow to pivot.
That means that I will make mistakes. Because it’s hard to learn without making some mistakes. The only way to not make any mistakes is to do nothing.
So I made one today. I will learn from it and not make this one again. Next time I make a different one, I will hopefully learn from that one, too. And if I do it well, I the distance between mistakes will get wider and wider.
Here’s hoping.
Yes to releasing the shame and yes to learning from my mistakes.
Weekly Intention: Ok here’s the plan this week. Lean in. Show up, be curious, be open. You can make all this work.
This month’s intention is:June: Yes to Light: Breathe in the fresh air. Summer is here. Smell the water. Go outside. Sit in the sunshine. One more school year is over. Celebrate your life. For now it’s all about sunshine. I will lean into the sunshine.
One way I will leap this week: changing my perspective at work. show up differently.
One boundary I will set this week: not getting on the rollercoaster.
One area where I will go deeper this week: journaling and an art practice are the two i still want to do.
What do I need to sit with this week? just being here, now.
I am looking forward to: having some of the conversations we will have this week.
Focus onCore Desired Feelings (lighter, kinder, enough, magic, wild): trying to pay attention to the little moments of magic and light.
This week’s challenges: i am hoping this will be a week where i can make some solid progress at work.
Top Goals:
Work: get through my todos, catchup, send more emails.
Personal: restart journaling plan, come up with art plan, find one class.
Family: be with J, get david to enroll in class, plan milestones for N
This week, I want to remember: i play a part in all this and i can choose what that part is.
I was journaling about my word today and when I looked it up, the dictionary said we can use yes as an opening to ask for more details, to be more curious, and we can use it as an affirmative as a response to something.
Yes as a beginning to a conversation and yes as an ending to a conversation. Yes to enthusiastically doing something and yes to accepting what is here now.
I love how this one small word can be used to create completely different possibilities.
I also love that I get to choose which yes I want to use in each moment. I can be intentional.
The Best Part of this Week: I had some tough and deep and meaningful conversations this week. Even though they were tough I think they really helped me.
I celebrate: i managed to do some lead-climbing for the first time ever on Saturday. I am proud of myself.
I am grateful for: having endless chances to get things right.
This week, I exercised: I climbed 2 times a week, rode every day for 20 mins, did 10 mins of core and 10 mins of arms and 5 minutes of stretching, 20 minutes of intro yoga, and 10 minutes of restorative yoga daily. And I did some outdoor climbing.
This week, I said yes to: practicing multi-pitch.
I said no to: letting things unravel.
I honored my values (love, learn, peace, service, gratitude):i have been leaning into these values so much in the last week. I have been thinking a lot about what they mean to me and how i can show up to honor them.
Top Goals Review:
Work: partly got through my todos, caught up to email, did not send more emails.
Personal: did not really restart journaling plan, did not come up with art plan, did OLW journal journaling, did not find one class.
Family: was with J, did not get david to enroll in class, planned schedule for N
My mood this week was: all over the place
I am proud of: i am proud of being open and honest and vulnerable and also not getting on the roller coaster
I release: everything from this week and start fresh every day, every moment.
Here’s what I learned this week: it get to show up and be me and i get to pivot and lean in and be here.
I have been thinking about this book ever since I read the first one over a year ago. I loved Sunshine Vikram then and I love her now.
This book has a lot going on. It’s romance, mystery, and comedy all rolled into one. And just to keep it even more fun, in this one, there are several romances, several mysterious plots, and the comedy is just oozing from every dialogue. I totally understand that might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
but it’s totally mine.
I love every one of the characters in this book. I love that there are like 5 mysteries that come together and get solved and I just love this author’s voice. I love the way the characters love each other and tease each other. I love the nonstop commentary. I even love the absurd scenes.
I was waiting for this book for over a year and it absolutely did not disappoint. I know it looks like many of the subplots from book one are tied up in this one but I really do hope there are more in the series. These characters are too good to not have more books written about them!
with gratitude to macmillan audio and netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
I don’t want to write too much about it because I think the best thing about this story is how it unravels and how you as a reader are constantly trying to figure out what’s going on and each time you think you have it, you realize you don’t. And it keeps going again and again.
This is not a story with a twist, it’s a story with a million little turns. It’s like each time a layer of the onion gets peeled your perspective of the onion’s actual shape changes. And in the end, the book leaves you devastated.
I almost didn’t request this book because it said it was horror and while I think the atmosphere and mood of the story definitely feels like horror, I don’t think calling this horror is the right fit. It’s a very atmospheric mystery maybe but really at its heart it’s a character study.
It’s absolutely phenomenal.
with gratitude to netgalley and Macmillan Audio for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
What an unusual novel. I think this one will have polarizing views. One will either enjoy the gimmick and laugh the whole time or will get stuck in it and feel it’s too absurd. I think as a short story this might have been cute, especially in a year when many of us lived on chat since we couldn’t have face to face conversations at work.
But alas, for me, it was too absurd. It got long and weird and not super funny. I also didn’t like some of the consent related issues that were glossed over as a joke. No need for those to be in the book but if they are, they should be handled not as a joke.
I did like the idea of this book and I did think it was cute and funny and even hilarious at parts. I think as a short story with a much tighter plot, it would have hit the mark more.
with gratitude to edelweis and doubleday for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
2.5 stars, rounded up. I have a lot of thoughts about this story.
On the one hand, I will say that it was a quick and light read in that I read it in one sitting, and enjoyed the time I spent with it.
On the other hand, I felt like most of the characters were not as layered as actual people are and this left the novel feeling not as enjoyable because everyone was playing a part in some ways. The really cold and distant mom (though she has a reason she’s that way, don’t we all?) to the point of cruelty. The really nice man, Mark, Brinkley meets that starts changing everything and he is just so nice again and again (even though he messes up once.) The weird closed-off boss who’s doing it all for your own good…. The other women who work with Brinkley were some of my favorites in the book. The side characters were fun, light, interesting and added the color the story enjoyed.
But the way women and men are treated like single dimensional beings in this story both makes it light and frustrating and frivolous. If you don’t spend too much time on it, you can enjoy the story and see it as a journey Brinkley is experiencing during what’s a low time in her life and how she’s building it back up. But if it’s hard to get past it, it will shadow too much of this story for you.
with gratitude to netgalley and Gallery Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
My favorite mystery novels are character-driven stories where there happens to be a mystery in the novel. This story by Belinda Bauer accomplishes the rare feat of being an interesting plot and character driven story. There’s a reasonably convoluted plot that unravels in pieces but there’s also deep and interesting character studies in this story. It’s also really fast paced. Accomplishing all that in a single novel is quite hard. I really enjoyed this one.
I am a big fan of Peter Heller and have read and enjoyed every one of his stories. Even though his settings and characters are very far from my day to day life, I enjoy the depth of character exploration and the atmosphere each of his novels has.
“The virus had mostly burned itself out and been vaccinated against, and other novel viruses had moved over the world and hit different countries more or less hard, and economies had convulsed and adjusted, those who could afford it spent more and more time on retreat in the remotest places. Like these mountains. The densest cities were still the most dangerous. And vacationing deep in the mountains when possible had become a cultural habit more than anything.”
This is the first novel I’ve read that takes place “after” covid and has incorporated one version of what the world might look like into the novel. I loved that it was part of the story but not the point of the story. The way it was woven in made it feel natural.
This is the story of a guide who takes a job at this elite fishing lodge and is paired with a famous singer who is there to fish. Even though the story contains both of them and you hear bits and pieces about the singer to pull together somewhat of an image of who she is, the story is really about the guide. We don’t really hear her innermost thoughts or her motivations much of the time.
The guide, like many of Heller’s characters, is rugged and layered and no-nonsense with a deep and abiding sense of justice. So when he realizes something fishy is going on at this lodge, he can’t not do something about it.
This book is both quiet and fast. It’s both a mystery and a bit of a character study. The atmosphere is strong both in the wilderness and in the lodge itself.
I loved every minute I spent with it.
With gratitude to Knopf and netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
